Breast check free
All it takes is some time to secure your health
HEALTH authorities are concerned about a steep drop-off in breast screening rates on the Gold Coast, with only 50 per cent of eligible women regularly having the lifesaving test.
Clinical director of BreastScreen Gold Coast, Dr Ellen Dooris said while COVID-19 had led to cancellations and a dramatic decline in tests earlier in the year, the number of women getting screened had already slowly decreased in recent years.
“Currently on the Gold Coast we’re only screening about 50-55 per cent of eligible women,” she said.
“So that’s about 45-50 per cent of women who aren’t regularly screening.
“Often breast cancers we find as part of the screening program are tiny. They are small breast cancers, that’s what we are in the business of trying to find, small breast
cancers before you can feel or notice any change.
“The vast majority of women we detect breast cancers in are unaware that they have a problem until their screening.”
In 2019, BreastScreen Queensland Gold Coast Service screened a record 33,647 women.
Almost two-thirds of breast cancers detected through the service were small cancers.
From January to September this year, 21,428 women were screened at the local service.
With no symptoms, it was an unrelated visit to her GP and a chance sighting of a BreastScreen sign that led to an early breast cancer diagnosis for Janine Oxley.
“Because I was turning 50 the GP said let’s do a full check-up,” said the mother of three, who is a nurse for Gold Coast Health.
“I thought, ‘I’ll pop online
and see if I can find one of the BreastScreen vans because I live on Mt Tamborine and don’t have access to clinics there’.
“I had the mammogram and I received a call back to say I needed some further investigation.
“I had the biopsy done and came back in a week to get the results.
“I thought, ‘no it won’t happen to me, it can’t happen to me, I have no symptoms’. When I walked in, I started to get a little scared and then was given the diagnosis.
“It was cancer.”
Mrs Oxley had a lumpectomy to remove a tumour and then radiation treatment at Robina Hospital, where she works in the acute medical unit.
During her treatment she continued to care for patients, including women with the same diagnosis as her.
Mrs Oxley, who is in remission, hopes her story will
motivate others to have a breast screen.
Since its inception in 1991, the BreastScreen Queensland Gold Coast Service has provided more than 709,000 breast screens for women and diagnosed more than 3500 invasive breast cancers, as of October 13 this year.
Free breast screening is available for women aged 40 and over without signs or symptoms of breast cancer.
Women aged between 50 and 74 years are recommended to have a breast screen every two years as the evidence of screening benefit is strongest for women of this age.
BreastScreen Queensland has clinics at Helensvale, Southport and West Burleigh and mobile screening vans at various Gold Coast locations
To book a free appointment, for women aged 40 and over, call 13 20 50 or visit breastscreen.qld.gov.au.